This issue of The Economist has a lot of good stuff of particular interest to me. Below is an article on the new outlook on immigrants in Holland. Note a few things. 1) Black Antillians are more of a crime concern in some areas than Muslims 2) A minority of Muslims go to sectarian schools (in keeping with the Dutch tradition of confessional pluralism) 3) Muslim girls do better at academics than boys Fortuynism without Fortuyn Nov 28th 2002 | ROTTERDAM From The Economist print edition The populist politician is dead. But not his ideas THE young man was angry. The real trouble, he said, was the downfall of the unemployed young, white, Dutch male. There aren't in fact many of them, and the liberal, middle-class audience among whom he sat at this conference on the rise of the far right was minded to jeer. He burst out: “None of you lives in a ghetto.” It was the most telling thing said that evening. Walk west from Rotterdam's Kruisplein and you'll see why. In two kilometres of down-market shopping street, one face in two or three is white. Cross the canal into Spangen, a district that still voted 39% for Labour in the March local elections when, city-wide, that long-dominant party was routed by an almost ad hoc group called Liveable Rotterdam (LR), led by Pim Fortuyn. A primary school is coming out. Hardly one of the children is white. “You see what we're on about?” says an LR man. Fortuyn is dead, murdered just before the Dutch general election in May. The totally ad hoc national “party” he had put together for the election is in utter disarray. Its vote, 17% in May, is now almost invisible to pollsters. The three-party cabinet that it joined, as the number two force, collapsed last month. After the new election, on January 22nd, its partners, the Christian Democrats and Liberals, may well form a government on their own. But Fortuynism is not dead: these two parties have taken it aboard; so, if less so, has Labour, the big loser in May. The campaign will be about “security” (ie, crime), immigration and integration—for many voters, all one issue. An ugly campaign it may be. But at last the old parties have noticed what Fortuyn did: that immigration and its effect on the fabric of society are real issues that do not go away just because the elite chooses not to mention them. Fortuyn, in fact, was not on about race, but culture, specifically that of the Muslim Turks and Moroccans who (with people from the Dutch Antilles, Surinamese and some West Africans) make up 6% of the population. But race is visible, and in Rotterdam the figure is 30%, not 6%. Facing up to reality, at last If the newcomers' integration, or lack of it, into Dutch society that Fortuyn talked of were the only problem, it would be hard enough. But just as visible is crime. Any Dutch voter will tell you about it; many associate it with immigrants; and they are not wholly wrong, as even newcomers' defenders admit. Of 250-odd people jailed last year for street crimes in central Rotterdam, 80% were from ethnic minorities. Minority is a catch-all term. The Turks have a better reputation than others. One LR councillor would like all illegal entrants packed off home, but would turn a “blind eye to those who work.” For example? Turks, he says, generally do so, but too many Moroccans live off drugs. “Turks are more modern, more educated, more adaptable than Moroccans. They're the next group that will integrate,” says a reporter in Rotterdam. Indeed, the big crime worry there now is about neither Moroccans nor Turks but the (non-Muslim) Antilleans. Nor is fear of crime a one-party or one-skin-colour affair. Rotterdam's town-hall weekly newsletter recently asked four councillors what changes they would most like to see. Three put security first. Two were LR; one was a Labour man—and, ethnically, a Turk. What is to be done? The outgoing government, with a Fortuynist minister, Hilbrand Nawijn, in charge of immigration and integration, set out, with some success, to close the doors, especially against asylum-seekers. But Mr Nawijn also studied ways to stop, notably, Moroccans bringing in new wives or husbands from their villages. He even took a look at depriving some Moroccan, but Dutch-citizen, criminals of their citizenship, so they could be deported; unconstitutional, he was told. As to integration, new arrivals were already required to take courses in language and citizenship—1,000 hours, within a year. On top, Mr Nawijn proposed to charge euro6,000 ($5,940), half refundable if the newcomer completes the course. In Rotterdam, run by a “cabinet” that includes three from LR, two Liberals and two Christian Democrats, the big priority is security. But integration is number two. One aim is by 2006 to get 50% of “immigrant” children into kindergarten and to improve their language skills up through school. For adult newcomers, the aim is to get 95% to do citizenship courses while halving the 30% drop-out rate. And so on. It may not happen, but the push is genuine: LR, with 16 seats out of 45, was sensibly run by Fortuyn after its March success, and even critics admit it lives in the real world. How to embrace them Another drive is on housing. Nearly all the city's land is council-owned; 80% of its dwellings are rented, many from ex-council housing associations. So if you want to move upmarket and buy your own place, you have to move to the suburbs. Result: one-class poor areas, which means one-race areas like Spangen or the solidly immigrant district near the Feyenoord football ground. So the council now plans to sell land, to encourage middle-class building and restore the social, and racial, mix. And private initiatives? Nationwide, immigrant groups are gloomy about the trends. The twin towers attack had a sharp effect, putting all Muslims under suspicion. When a poll showed half could “understand” the attack, public opinion (falsely, as the poll also showed) turned that into “sympathise with”. In reaction, some Muslims feel they may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, “if we're going to be rejected anyway, however hard we try to be Dutch.” More Muslim women than before now wear headscarves. The good news is that wise Muslims, while resenting the new suspicions and media distortion, recognise they face real issues: the high rate of immigrant crime is a fact, not just a racist invention; poor command of Dutch or poor education are true barriers. Muslim society is under its own stress: paternal authority has weakened, while Muslim mothers are eager for their daughters to have the chances they themselves did not. The girls (boys less so) are starting to do well in education. A minority of the young go to the 37 Islamic schools, state-financed, in the Dutch tradition. Nor are these schools hives of separatism; most are just the opposite, said a recent official report. Nor, by and large, are the mosques, conservative as some are and unwise the odd imam, like the one whose comparison of gays with pigs, in the pigs' favour, set off Fortuyn's notorious attack on “backward” Islam. Tensions are indeed “worse than they've ever been”, says one pro-immigrant. But it is not just virtuous bodies like one called Islam and Citizenship that are trying to ensure those two words go together; so far, at least, it is the mass of Muslims.